On Tulsa King, revenge is a dish best served in thirty minutes or less, or it’s free! Something like that, anyway. The show spent its entire second season establishing the five factions warring for control of Tulsa’s weed farms: the New York mob, led first by Chickie Invernizzi and now by Vince Antonacci; the Kansas City mob, led by Bill Bevilacqua; Cal Thresher, oil baron turned unscrupulous weed magnate; Jackie Ming, Thresher’s partner and the boss of the local Triad organization; and Dwight Manfredi’s Tulsa outfit itself, a motley crew of disparate interests — nebbishy weed-store owners, Native American growers and wind farmers, a smattering of wiseguys, would-be and otherwise — held together by Manfredi’s own charisma. In this episode, it dispenses with the conflict in a matter of seconds.
It doesn’t even take much time or effort to get to that point, either. After getting forced out of his own weed business by his turncoat Triad partner, Thresher’s marching orders from his ally Bevilaqua are simple: “Fix it!†“Yeah, go fuck yourself,†Thresher grumbles as he leaves.
But he does what he’s told. He turns to the only person who could possibly curry him favor with Dwight, who (more or less correctly) blames him for the whole mess: Margaret, the ranch owner in whom they are both romantically interested, Dwight more successfully than Cal. Unbeknownst to anyone (including us in the audience), Cal has become a 49 percent stakeholder in her ranch, and since Ming is trying to take over everything Thresher owns, she could be next on the chopping block at any time. He pressures her to pressure Dwight, who can’t say no to her for long.
Thresher’s not alone dangling there at the end of his rope. Armand, Dwight’s rogue soldier, makes it as far as a crossroads out of town before giving up and heading back in an emotional panic. He runs to Ming for help, offering to lure him to the one place Dwight is most vulnerable: Margaret’s ranch, where their offscreen sex life takes place.
At least that’s what you’re supposed to think, and very well might if you’re not a terribly receptive viewer. In the middle of all this, Dwight’s talking to his sister Joanne at home when his bodyguard, Bigfoot, announces, “You have a visitor.†We aren’t shown who it is until a flashback near the end of the episode, but there’s only one person it can be — Armand — and there’s only one thing Dwight could have asked him to do to earn absolution: Lure Ming and his men to their deaths.
Which he does. Leading them onto the ranch, he feigns anxiety-related exhaustion, then scampers away. And assassins from a coalition of all the local indigenous tribes — out for blood over the murder of Jimmy the Creek, one of their own, last episode — slit the throats of Ming’s rear guard. Gunmen from the Manfredi and Bevilaqua outfits, led by weed store employee and unlikely sharpshooter Grace, take out the rest of the Triads. As for Ming himself, Dwight hands his right-hand man Tyson the tomahawk he was given at Jimmy’s funeral service, and Tyson buries it in the Chinese-American ganglord’s skull. Sic semper tyrannis or whatever. Tyson has also been somewhat reconciled with his resentful mother thanks to his dad, so it’s a real red-letter day for him.
But that still leaves the question of Armand an open one, giving actor Max Casella one more chance to shine in a role he’s really made a meal of these past few episodes. Despite his role in the defeat of the Triads, Armand reveals he has no intention of living past the confrontation himself. He’d sworn never to run again, and he went back on his word, one final fuck-up in a life full of them. His intention, all along it seems, was to make up for his betrayal and then commit suicide by Dwight. But Manfredi spares him. “It’s never too late to make things right,†the boss man says, making Armand repeat it.
And then Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly†plays for some reason as they dispose of over a dozen corpses, including one killed with an ax to the head, and Dwight goes to bed with a horny Margaret. It feels like the end of the season, honestly.
But Chickie, who’s found himself on the no-fly list thanks to his moronic gun-at-the-airport incident, is taking the train out to Tulsa on a mission. His short-sighted banishment of a legend — and an earner — like Dwight Manfredi to Tulsa was cited by the other bosses as a reason for his ouster. (Technically his dad made the call, but Chickie stood the most to benefit from the ouster of a potential rival for the throne upon his dad’s death.) If Chickie can lure Dwight back into the fold, his replacement Vince and the others say, Chickie himself will be welcomed back too.
Is it all a bit anticlimactic? Yeah, honestly. Having the big bloodbath take place in the penultimate episode rather than the season finale is, at this point, a pretty old-school HBO-style maneuver, dating back to the New Golden Age heyday that ran from The Sopranos through Game of Thrones. But this just makes me more intrigued about what could possibly happen between Dwight and Chickie in the finale. Are we gonna get a lengthy heart-to-heart, some kind of acting showcase for Sylvester Stallone and Domenick Lombardozzi? Are we going to get a one-on-one fight to the death? Is there some curveball headed our way? (The Mitch/Tina romance it seemed like we were headed towards never materialized, just for starters.) I genuinely have no idea what’s going to happen, and how often do you get to say that about Tulsa King?